Publishers Weekly
02/05/2024
Freudenberger (Lost and Wanted) offers a layered story of race and privilege set against the backdrop of Covid-19 lockdowns. Pia, 15, has been raised since her parents’ divorce five years ago on the island of Mo’orea in French Polynesia by her marine biologist mother, Nathalie. Now, in fall 2020, Pia’s sent to live with her father, Stephen, a cardiologist in New York City, where, with Covid case numbers decreasing and the lockdown lifting, Nathalie hopes she will get some much needed “socialization of her peers.” Stephen lives with his younger, pregnant wife, high school teacher Kate, whose relationship with Pia starts off strained. Meanwhile, one of Kate’s students, Athyna, who is Black, takes care of her toddler nephew full-time while trying to complete her senior year remotely in Staten Island. The eventual friendship between Pia and Athyna provides an opportunity for Freudenberger to explore the girls’ varying experience of the pandemic due to racial and class differences, as when Athyna joins the family in the Hamptons and Pia urges her to say she’s Pia’s friend to anyone who asks where she lives. Freudenberger’s longtime fans will find all the probing social insights and well-drawn characters they’ve come to expect from this accomplished author. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
"[The Limits] displays one of the most impressive aspects of Freudenberger’s work: Deep research is effortlessly deployed in the service of a story and pressing contemporary issues are woven seamlessly into the fabric of the novel. Here, Freudenberger’s moral passion about the capitalistic exploitation of natural resources and the horrors of climate change charges the novel with an ethical force. As always, her graceful, limpid writing style makes the novel eminently readable.” —The Boston Globe
“Deeply moving . . . An astonishingly realistic portrayal of everyday people facing the challenges of modern life.” –Real Simple
“Engaging . . . The Limits is insightful about the ways the Covid crisis applied pressure to unsteady joints, as if testing which bonds would last.” —Wall Street Journal
"In Freudenberger’s worldly, sophisticated storytelling, characters who are essentially good fumble and cause accidents everywhere they go." –Vogue
"Freudenberger ably captures the sense of uncertainty and displacement during the height of the pandemic, matching the inner confusion of major life changes with the outer turmoil of a world in crisis." –The Washington Post
“From New York City to a Zoom screen, from a hospital full of early COVID-19 cases to an island off the coast of Tahiti, Freudenberger brings the anxieties and challenges of the early pandemic days to vivid, engaging life. The characters have full and fascinating inner lives, and real concerns—parenthood, a spreading virus, preserving the natural world—that layer with their interpersonal conflicts . . . In The Limits, Freudenberger deftly employs the questions posed by climate change, seafloor mining and the struggle of modern medicine in the face of the unknown to shape the story.” —BookPage (starred review)
“Freudenberger’s exceptional skills as a novelist, her seamless prose and formidable intelligence, are on full display in The Limits. A novel about privilege and precarity, isolation and trauma, it is also a story of tenderness, love, and ultimately, hope.” –Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies
“A big-hearted, tightly-plotted novel that bravely takes on our times—from Covid-19 to climate change—by looking at the timeless stuff of human intimacy. Nell Freudenberger writes beautifully about the bonds between people: parents and children, lovers and exes, even strangers. The Limits is an immersive and powerful book.” –Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind
“Nell Freudenberger proves yet again a masterful novelist, deftly painting her characters' interwoven lives against the backdrop of our tumultuous times. Rich, nuanced and compelling, The Limits is a deeply satisfying novel.” –Claire Messud, author of The Burning Girl
“The Limits brilliantly renders the era of the pandemic, capturing how two families, in all their imperfections, try so valiantly to hold on to their loved ones in a difficult time. When you combine Freudenberger's meticulous research with her ability to portray our most complicated selves, the result is a novel that enlightens us in all the ways that truly matter. You will be transformed by this story.” –Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of Take My Hand
“The Limits is a transcendently powerful novel, one that will haunt you with its urgent questions. What happens when we reach our own limits: of our capacity to love, or to meet the needs of those who rely on us, or to brook the extraordinary uncertainties of our world? You’ll stay up long past bedtime reading and rereading these exquisitely wrought pages. Freudenberger is a master of the novelist’s art, and this is her best work yet.” –Julie Orringer, author of The Invisible Bridge
“As in Freudenberger's previous work, scientific points are well integrated and explained, and the intelligent, precise narration is a pleasure, with graceful depiction of the characters' inner lives.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A layered story of race and privilege set against the backdrop of Covid-19 lockdowns . . . Freudenberger’s longtime fans will find all the probing social insights and well-drawn characters they’ve come to expect from this accomplished author.” –Publishers Weekly
“Freudenberger is fluent in every realm, social conundrum, and crime against the earth she brings into focus, keenly attuned to science and emotion, tradition and high-tech, race and gender, greed and conscience, irony and tragedy. Each characters’ challenges are significant on scales intimate and global and their wrestling with secrets, anger, and fear grows increasingly suspenseful in this lambent, deeply sympathetic, and thought-provoking novel.” –Booklist (starred review)
"Freudenberger brings the anxieties and challenges of the early pandemic days to vivid, engaging life . . . In The Limits, Freudenberger deftly employs thequestions posed by climate change, seafloormining and the struggle of modern medicinein the face of the unknown to shape the story." –BookPage (starred review)
“Sensitive, luminous, and sometimes wryly funny, The Limits is a nuanced portrait of the difficult, worthwhile work of connecting with others-–even during a global disaster.” –Shelf Awareness
APRIL 2024 - AudioFile
Set in New York City and French Polynesia in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, this mesmerizing audiobook is flawlessly narrated by Rebecca Lowman. Pia is the 15-year-old daughter of Stephen, a cardiologist at a New York City hospital, and Natalie, a marine biologist. Hoping to attend high school in person, Pia relocates from the island where Natalie is conducting research to the posh New York City apartment of her father and his pregnant second wife, Kate. Lowman's flexible, emotive delivery and steady pace settle listeners into this contemplative story exploring medicine, environmental devastation, colonialism, family dynamics, and the impact of privilege during the pandemic. Lowman relays complex scientific and medical concepts with ease, and her impeccable French pronunciation adds authenticity to Natalie's island life. M.J. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2024-01-05
In Tahiti and New York, a white family splintered by divorce and geography confronts problems during the pandemic.
Freudenberger's fourth novel opens underwater in Polynesia on the last day of 2020, where French marine biologist Nathalie is scuba diving when she is called to shore to take a phone call. It's her ex-husband's second wife phoning from New York to say they have lost track of 15-year-old Pia, who hasn't been seen for several days. This particular plotline, which unfolds over the course of a day, is one among several in this complex novel with five point-of-view characters: Nathalie; her ex, Stephen, a physician in the intensive care unit of a New York hospital; their daughter, Pia; Stephen's pregnant second wife, Kate, a high school teacher; and Athyna, one of Kate's students, a Black girl who cares for her toddler nephew. The apparent threat and suspense generated by the missing-teenager story attenuates fairly quickly, and this slackening is echoed in so many other threads that it almost seems a motif. There's a secret email correspondence, a snarky hidden notebook, an age-inappropriate infatuation, a car accident on a Long Island expressway, a character who walks into a chainsaw blade; there's the politics of colonialism, nuclear testing, and coral mining; and of course, there's the Covid-era ICU and the pregnancy. It would be a lot to worry about, but after a while, you realize you don't need to worry. "I have the balls," says one character, explaining why one of the bad things has been called off, "not the stomach." As in Freudenberger's previous work, scientific points are well integrated and explained, and the intelligent, precise narration is a pleasure, with graceful depiction of the characters' inner lives.
Too much and not enough.
